𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐄𝐲𝐞𝐬 & 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 // a Harry Potter fanfiction

Chapter 2: Shattered

Evelyn truly suffered every month due to her lycanthropy. That was guaranteed as one, and then two years passed.
She never had anything to ease her transformations. Her father, who had become so absorbed by his guilt, refused to acknowledge what he'd done to his daughter.

Visiting a hospital would make the shame unbearable. People would ask questions. He knew her condition was his fault. He never really did anything to rectify it. Cassia was too grief-stricken to fight him.
And then, when Evelyn was mere weeks away from her eight birthday, a most horrible incident occurred.

It was 23 November 1988, a full moon night, and her father was working late in a Muggle antique shop. He'd abandoned his ministry job soon after Fenrir Greyback's attack. Back at home, Cassia had mainly focused on her independent research, and spent most of her time in her study.

The family had fallen into a routine. They'd become masters at distracting themselves and avoiding the harsh reality of Evelyn's condition.

Bury the pain.
Bury the guilt.
Bury the shame.

But routine is dangerous. It leaves individuals unprepared and unguarded. Routine had made Cassia close the door of the basement, but she did not lock it.

Evelyn unsurprisingly escaped in her werewolf form. She roamed around the house hungrily and stalked into the study.

She then turned savage and mauled her own mother. She killed her. One bite to the neck.

And, when the beast had left from within her and she realised what she'd done, she screamed, sobbed and wailed her voice hoarse. Her vocal chords were raw when her father returned home.

Where her heart broke, his shattered. Where she shed tears, he sobbed an ocean's worth of them. Anthony Rivers was debilitated by his grief.

In 1989 her father vanished. Evelyn couldn't blame him for the abandonment. He had no family anymore. The one that he once had was dead and gone. All because she was a monster.

A monster who ripped him cruelly from his daughter and wife.

A murderer.

- - -

Evelyn hated stealing, it did nothing to ease her already pained conscience, but she had no other choice. Her father had disappeared four months ago, and although she still had access to their old family home, food was not a commodity. She walked as casually as she could past a street vendor, grabbing the first thing she could get her hands on.

When she was a few metres away, certain that she wouldn't be caught, she glanced quickly and subtly into her oversized robe pocket, her eyes falling on the day's meal. A green apple.

Evelyn nodded, content with the food item she'd pocketed. She never tried to steal more, and always tried to remain discreet.

She wandered home quickly, once again rearranging her belongings in a worn-out trunk for what felt like the thirteenth time that day. She didn't plan on going anywhere special, she just knew she needed to leave. Two months had been too long.

There were too many memories, good and bad.

She knew leaving probably wasn't the greatest idea, but she'd thought through the entire process extensively and deduced (as well as was possible for a 9-year-old) that this house was fully paid off. After all, no government officials had come by looking to sell or reclaim it (yet). As much as she had grown to hate the house which reignited her past traumas, it was a necessity that it be there and ready if she had a need for it.

Evelyn had spent part of the last month (after finally accepting that her father wasn't coming back) in her mother's study, collecting anything that might've been important. She couldn't bear to stay in that room any longer than she needed to, though.

She had found a folder enchanted to hold an endless number of documents. Within it were all the important ones. She'd uttered a silent thank you to her massacred mother (though she knew her mother probably wouldn't have done her that favour if she had known what was to come)

Two of the documents stood out to her.

Last Will and Testament of Cassia Rivers neé Wright.

Last Will and Testament of Anthony Rivers

She was certain that if she faced any trouble regarding ownership of the house, these would be incredibly helpful. Skimming through both documents, whilst trying to decipher legal jargon, she gathered that the house was hers (assuming her father was no longer alive?).

She only hoped that he wouldn't sell it, if he was.

Another discovery she made was a leather journal. She couldn't read it however, since it was locked with magic. Not that she really wanted to read it at the time... the idea of seeing the last words her mother ever wrote in it would be far too much for her to handle.

She found her father's wristwatch, and had held it to her chest as she'd sobbed. She'd never seen him without it... until. Safe to say, it became one of her greatest treasures. She knew she should've held some resentment towards him for abandoning her, but she just... couldn't.

She missed both her parents desperately, but she had to survive.

However, her condition did not make that easy... by any means.

She had to find quite a creative way to lock herself in the basement, not having someone to do it for her from the outside. She had opted to climb through the basement window. It was small and located quite close to the ceiling. Her wolf form would never fit through, however she found it quite easy to squeeze her malnourished body into the gap.

Her transformations were growing more painful every month. They were already extremely physically demanding for someone who was NOT malnourished and potionless, so Evelyn had really gotten the short end of the stick.

If she were to leave, another worry of hers was hiding herself during a full moon without having a basement to trap herself in. That's where her father's career choice of being a Werewolf Capture Unit employee came in handy.

She'd found many of his old gadgets, one being an indestructible net that was laced with silver. The silver content was extremely potent, and it quite immediately had a sedative effect on her, and she lost consciousness for a period of roughly 12 hours.
Evelyn had tested it, and she'd managed to remove the net quite easily as she awoke. It was not an ideal solution, but she was desperate. She didn't concern herself with what effects repeated silver exposure had on werewolves. She couldn't find it within herself to care, even though it left her feeling quite ill after being encased in her poison for an entire night.

It might sound completely barbaric, but Evelyn would rather subject herself to silver than to roam freely in that form again.

Having all the logistics in order, Evelyn was left with the impossible task of packing her bag. She knew she couldn't be sentimental. She needed to take nothing but the basics, and items crucial to her (and other's) survival.

Clothes. That was all she'd gotten right so far. She had to scour all the cupboards in the house for anything decent to wear, and it was a struggle to find anything that fit.

She slowly placed the infinity folder on top of the clothes in her trunk, alongside her mum's journal. She crammed the silver-laced net into a side compartment, and some saved up coins she'd found along the street and in the house.

She stared at the wand in her hand. It was her mother's. Her father's had gone with him. She had not yet gotten her own wand, and she likely never would.

She had heard such wonderful things about the magic school her father attended, but she'd already accepted that she would never be allowed at Hogwarts. Not only because she was virtually non-existent to the outside world, but also because she was nothing but a hazard to others.

Walking out of the front door, she turned to look at her old home with a weak and sad smile. "I guess this is goodbye...", Evelyn said while turning her back to 53 Swan Street.

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